As communities across Canada and the United States deal with a surge in proposed AI data centres, councillors in the Greater Toronto Area say they’re trying to push for a more comprehensive response amid environmental concerns.During a meeting of Mississauga city council on Tuesday, Coun. Martin Reid is set to introduce a notice of motion calling for an interim control bylaw to stop the development of “major digital infrastructure facilities” for up to a year so City staff can conduct a planning study as well as a thorough review of bylaws and policies.CityNews met with Reid on Monday at the site of what he said would be the first massive, hyperscale data centre in the community. Located on Tenth Line west of Winston Churchill Boulevard and Highway 401 and near Lisgar GO station, the site is nestled next to a house, a church, greenspace and an existing warehouse. But just hundreds of metres away, there’s a large shopping centre along with current and proposed housing subdivisions.When speaking with residents, Reid said he’s heard examples raised of cities in the U.S. involving excessive water and electricity consumption. Without large-scale examples in the GTA, he said it leaves a lot of uncertainty.“There are still so many questions that need to be answered, and until we have a fulsome understanding of it this is not something that I feel that I can responsibly support,” Reid said.“We’re not sure what the tenant is going to be using it for, so there are worst-case scenarios that we read, there are totally safe examples that we read and the reality is that we’re somewhere in the middle with no clear answers.“Let’s do our homework first before we say yes.”In the absence of detailed and concrete information on the impacts to residential communities and local infrastructure, Reid said he wanted to see a pause put in place — something he added he’s heard some support for from fellow council members.“I’m not reading this as saying this is the same as Wichita, Utah, somewhere where they’re taking away all the water from our water table, and there’s going to be this massive hum all night long,” he said. “I’m concerned about all of those extreme examples, but I haven’t got any certainty that it’s not going to be that. And until I’m certain that it’s not going to be that, there’s no way that you’ll ever get a yes out of me on this.”CityNews contacted Prologis, the owner of the site, Monday afternoon to ask about Reid’s notice of motion and overall concerns, but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication. This story will be updated if a response is received.Hamilton city council recently saw vocal opposition to a proposed data centre and despite an earlier move to consider a moratorium, that move was later voted down amid concerns over a potential legal battle and lost investment.When Toronto council meets this week, two councillors are bringing forward motions on AI data centres in their wards. Coun. Vincent Crisanti wants to formally ask for a meeting with an applicant for a facility on Lowes Place near Islington Avenue and Highway 401 to discuss potentially adding additional mitigation measures.Coun. Parthi Kandavel is moving a motion calling for a pause and additional information on a large-scale data centre proposed by Stack Infrastructure at the corner of Birchmount Road and Danforth Avenue, as well as changes to processes for similar applications.“Concerns are about water impact, pressure, strain on the energy grid, and noise levels are important concerns to be addressed before final approvals,” he told CityNews, noting the proposed facility is in the middle of an established residential community.“Given that this is a permitted land use, we’re asking for this application before they go to building permits that it’s aligned with all the research and work being done by our senior staff on the policy on how to process and the framework around data centres in the future.”Kandavel said he’s cognizant of the need for AI data centres to be operated in Canada as part of a broader push for “data sovereignty,” but added he and others are looking for “thoughtful consideration.”A representative with Stack told CityNews in a statement that the company has been working with the City of Toronto since 2022.“We have been operating in the community since 2023, and the expansion project has undergone extensive technical review and includes measures to address noise and limit water use through a closed-loop cooling system,” the statement said.“Furthermore, Stack is directly funding the required electrical distribution upgrades to help protect ratepayers. We remain committed to meeting all applicable requirements and being a responsible long-term partner in the community.”CityNews asked Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow about the concerns involving the two projects. She said she’s awaiting the results of a broader City staff report on artificial intelligence usage and AI data centres.“If it is just better services, it’s one thing. If it displaces people and turns everything upside down, it’s a very different issue and there has to be ethical guardrails and that for me is even more important,” she said.Both Reid and Kandavel said they would like the Ontario government to take the lead on responding to concerns over AI data centres since municipalities across the province are receiving applications.In a statement to CityNews, a spokesperson for Ontario economic development minister Vic Fedeli said investments must bring “lasting prosperity.”“No digital infrastructure project will proceed unless it contributes to the local economy and the company commits to paying the full cost of energy,” Gianpiero Colangelo wrote.“As part of the actions taken to protect families and ratepayers, our government has passed legislation that puts in place clear guardrails and gives Ontario the authority to prevent projects from connecting to the grid if they fail to meet these expectations.”The statement didn’t elaborate on the “clear guardrails” or the threshold needed for action by the government.How-Sen Chong, a climate campaigner with the Toronto Environmental Alliance, said he would like to see a pause on AI data centres. He pointed to examples of facilities reliant on power derived from fossil fuels that have high energy and water use.“A lot of our planning processes aren’t built for this kind of project yet and so many of these projects, especially the worst-performing ones, are taking advantage of the newness of this to try to put in these projects that can have very serious environmental effects,” Chong said.“One of the data centres that’s being proposed right now is expected to use up to 50 megawatts of electricity — that’s equivalent of every single building in East York.“We need to make sure that if these projects are going to go through, that the major environmental impacts are understood before they’re done because we live in a city of very strong communities that also need to share a lot of these resources as well.”Eric Miller, director of York University’s Ecological Footprint Initiative, described how he and other researchers rely on AI data centres to help carry out their work analyzing various environmental-related datasets.“These computations involve potentially hundreds of millions of rows of data, which are beyond the amount of data you can fit within a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet,” he explained to CityNews.When it comes to AI data centres and impacts on the environment, Miller said geography and existing infrastructure are important considerations to keep in mind. “How are they sourcing the electricity? Are they sourcing it from the local grid and if they are, how much pollution is generated in order to generate that local electricity? Or if they’re generating on their own site, potentially even with backup systems, how is that being generated?” he said, referring to questions that should be asked.“That also then relates to the capacity of the data centre. How much data is being processed and stored on site, and how is all that processing being cooled? Because any kind of high-performance computing does generate a lot of waste heat, and so there are questions about how that is cooled.”The initiative used cloud computing and storage services in the U.S., which he noted “has a very high carbon intensity of its electricity.” After reviewing the services and consumption, Miller said he decided to shift to a facility located just south of Montreal. He noted Quebec’s electricity grid is powered by renewable resources and is generally more environmentally friendly compared to Ontario. “We did a calculation that we were able to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with doing our own computations of environmental data by about 87 per cent,” he said.